Flaco the Central Park owl has been free for a year. An NYC photographer looks back.

Friday marks a year since an owl named Flaco escaped from his home in New York’s Central Park Zoo after vandals damaged his mesh enclosure.

Within days, the Eurasian eagle owl amassed fans in New York and beyond who worried about his ability to survive in the big city.

But Flaco is thriving. New Yorkers continue to spot him on fire escapes and cornices, and have observed him peering into windows.

The owl’s feathery form even appears on sweatshirts, coffee mugs and stickers, among other merch.

Few people know Flaco better than Manhattan-based wildlife observer and photographer David Lei, who specializes in urban owls.

He’s been following and photographing Flaco for the past year and estimates he has taken tens of thousands of photos of the celebrity bird.

Lei caught up with WNYC’s Michael Hill to discuss a year of Flaco.

Michael Hill: David, you probably know Flaco pretty well by now. Describe him for us.

David Lei: First of all, Flaco is beautiful. Just absolutely majestic and magnificent. He looks much like our native great horned owls, but quite different with beautiful orange plumes and orange eyes. He’s got a massive 6-foot wingspan, and it’s just a delight to behold him.

In addition to that, he really has an interesting personality. First of all, he is very curious. Once, we saw him on a pitcher’s mound on one of the Central Park baseball fields, and somebody had left behind their pitcher’s rosin bag, and he started playing with it. Owls are occasionally playful, but it was very interesting to observe him do that.

In the beginning, there was concern that Flaco wouldn’t know how to hunt and survive outside captivity, but now he’s a true New Yorker. How do you think he was able to adjust?

He really just needed to embrace that instinct and rediscover his wild nature. He initially wasn’t very good at flying. He’d get exhausted quite quickly, flying a short distance from one tree to the next,…